Recently Sphinn moderators decided to close comments on the most active discussion going on because the moderator thought the comments were "going in circles."

My question is should Sphinn close comments on threads?

If someone is being abusive or breaking other rules, obviously they should be reprimanded. If a discussion is not something that should be on Sphinn, shouldnt the submission be removed or wont they be desphunn by the community?

I just dont see why discussion should be halted on a topic completely. The way it is now it looks like Sphinn is trying to control what is and isnt discussed about a certain company that happens to be close to the Sphinn owners.54 Comments

Comments

Whilst its always a mods call, it looked like there was still a degree of milege in that thread, but thats just my personal opinion. A mod might say that youve got to draw a line somewhere, someone has to decide, if not a mod then who?

I think the most recent Randgate was a time when closing comments really is for the benefit of everyone. Sometimes we all need to be saved from ourselves and taken out of the heat of the moment. Ive had Danny come in and shut off threads that Ive been involved in. A day later, when the blood has returned to my head and my hands have stopped shaking, Im always thankful for it. Way less mess to clean up the following day.

@Othelisa, so the fact that people get caught up in the moment and cause harm to themselves or their reputations is a reason to close legitimate discussion of an issue facing the SEO community?Im sorry, but I dont think the job of a moderator is to determine who needs saving from themselves.

I dont think we should save others from themselves. Ive been lucky at times where Ive inadvertantly saved myself from myself. Like I go to post something I know I shouldnt, and technology intervenes and it doesnt post and stuff like that. Maybe a guardian angel?

Skitzzo: I think its the job of the moderator to protect the integrity of the community. Watching people comment only to take jabs at each other and talk in circles with nothing getting resolved doesnt really help anyone. I see both sides, but Ive never had a problem with the mods closing comments when the community is a little too high on the crazy pills. :)Jill: I guess Im still at the point where I sometimes need someone to come and shut me up. Heh.

Hmmm... the fact SeoMoz spends a lot of money here makes me very skeptical about who is saving who from what! Rand has credibility problems not just reputation management problems. Obviously hell lie to cover his asse. There is a huge difference between a crawler thats blockable and one that just scrapes er "borrows" info from other places. I could do that... I was suspicious as soon as I saw the price tag and 30 Billion pages indexed! IMO, that should have raised a lot of flags... but then to the Randites arent exactly the sharpest tools in the box or they would make better choices about where they go for info.

Wow. Lisa got negative votes for leaving a level headed comment? Weird.My take is that the more user generated content sphinn can get outta people the better. To end a thread seems weird to me. If people do not wanna be invovled in it then they can just not add to the discussion. But if people want to continue a conversation then they should have a venue to do so.In the future if the mods want to stop a discussion maybe they can link to a place where the conversation can go on.

@0thelisa, oh I agree, and thats why I said anyone who breaks the rules should be dealt with. However, a heated discussion or debate on a relevant issue should not be halted. I just dont see any reason that comments should be closed off completely.Either the thread is irrelevant or isnt something that should be discussed on Sphinn (in which case the submission should be removed etc) or it is. If it is, and someone becomes abusive they should be dealt with singularly, not at the expense of the community and the discussion as a whole.Also, I think Suggaraes suggestion is a good one but not something I see happening. Sphinn benefits from having the user generated content here and I dont see that going away any time soon. Maybe it could be an option of the submitter whether or not to allow comments here or exclusively on their blog?

>Im sorry, but I dont think the job of a moderator is to determine who needs saving from themselves.@skitzzo sometimes kids in the schoolyard get into a fight. Its the hall monitors job to break it up before one of them seriously hurts the other or accidentally puts someones eye out. In a virtual world where the only thing that exists are words one a page its hard to tell when weve moved past the posturing stage and into the pushing and shoving one.

@graywolf, youre really on a school kick today huh ;)Seriously though, if two "kids" get in a fight here, they should be removed but why close down the discussion completely?If the issue is the potential harm to ones business should the mods not allow any negative submissions about any companies?

Im the one who voted for lisa because when someone prove they are what they are perceived by many as then... nobody should be saving anyone from anything! I say lots of stupid things. I apologize and I learn a lesson the problemn here is Rand seems to be the teflon Don of SEO!

I agree with Lisa here. Rand admitted hes only had a few hours sleep and the discussion was getting over-heated. Best thing is to shut down the thread and let everyone take a deep breath.Id hope the same would be done for me in that situation. Let Rand get some sleep, meet up with his people on Monday and review what was said this weekend.

Total BS!! Mods should not be shutting off conversations at will. it sets a horrible precedent. No way to justify it, honestly, I can give a rats ass about the linkscape drama, but having sphinn step in and just shut off all comments on that one story is wrong on so many levels. Mike and Rand were not the only ones commenting.

I arrived late to that thread, and, I was reading through it from beginning to end. It held my interest, and, it struck me, for the most part, as rather civil. I was a bit disappointed when I reached the end and saw that comments were closed. I always enjoy seeing Michael methodically outline any deception ... and, Rands self-deprecating proclamations of innocence were also entertaining. I do have a feeling, though, that soon enough there will be a different set of circumstances which is thematically rather similar... but, in a more direct response to your question, Ill add that comments should be closed when a discussion is nasty, abusive, slanderous, etc. That thread didnt seem to fit those categories. Going in circles for a while can sometimes lead to some truth.kf

The conversation on the thread you are referencing was going nowhere, and a couple of members were a few comments away from having their accounts disabled.Although an SEOmoz staff member is a Sphinn Moderator, they were not invovled in the comments being closed, nor does SEOmoz have extra influence over our moderation policies.We rarely close comments, although with the way that the conversation was going, it was totally justified.

Rob, I agree that the comments between two of the people were just going round and round and that no conclusion was going to be reached between the two parties. But in my opinion other people were adding comments of value.Even though the story had been submitted for a while, the first comment was posted about 24 hours before you closed it.Your closing of it it so early is the same as saying that anyone who had anything to say about it would have done so within those 24 hours (Sat night to Sunday).It seems to me, that by closing the comments so early, that you short changed the community a little bit.

@evilgreenmonkey, if members were close to having their accounts disabled why not either give a warning in the thread or deal with those members indiividually?Im sorry but you saying it was totally justified doesnt hold much extra weight since youre the one that made the decision in the first place. Its not surprising that you agree withyourself.

@vingold exactly, "short changed the community" . Preventing two grown men from "getting themselves banned" does not justify closing off a conversation to others. To stay on graywolfs school theme, its like the teachers , who say the whole class is suspended to prevent 2 other students from being suspnded for calling each other names.

I was glad to see that a moderator finally put a long deserved end to that sphinn. It was clogging up the Sphinn Comment feed with a lot of rubbish. If anything, that sphinn should have been put to rest hours earlier. That way, a lot more deserving sphinns could have gone hot. Just my opinion, but I am always right.

I thought it was an interesting discussion. There was a lot of confusion. I saw the presentation at SMX east that given. Unless things go completley "out of bounds" I am not sure why the conversation would get shut down. As long as there is a real "discussion" and people are not just attacking each other and their companies. In my opinion the conversation was based around what could be considered fairly "big news" in our industry. I was led to it from a twitter post. Although, I must admint, I have no knowledge of the principles that guide these decisions. From a readers perspective it seemed strange to cut it off. It seemed like it was building.

If some of the commenters were bothersome, then they shouldve been dealt personally. Letting the members contribute content is one of the cornerstones of the web and user participated websites. Stopping a discussion from reaching the truth or a definitive conclusion is overdoing it. Sphinn members should decide for themselves, whether they should continue reading the discussion.I doubt having the discussion was too much a strain on the servers. I think close relationships of SEOmoz and Danny indirectly influenced this. I am totally sure, they didnt think "Oh, we know Rand and Rebecca will grill us to death, if we dont shut the thread", but the mods certainly have felt it.

Well I took just one day off (and it was a Sunday!) and now I cant answer Rands claim that my criticism of Rand is "personal". I would if comments werent closed. So you know my vote. Oh, and for the record, its not personal. Its professional.I had never even met Rand in person when he "misrepresented the facts" and tried to color my reputation last time. Here he keeps trying to link himself with Danny Sullivan, and again refers to me "attacking" Danny. Poor Danny. As long as an individual chooses to play the impression/misdirection game, he deserves to be held accountable. When Sphinn chooses to protect him (by closing comments like this), Sphinn shows its true colors (which appear to be evil green once again).By the way, just as lies tend to snowball out of control, so does moderation. If you close comments and leave the thread in public as "documented history", you earn yourself criticism for censoring reality. If you remove it from view, you have censored even more. So now what? Thats right... you cant fix it. Cats out of the bag. Dannys done much, much better at handling issues than this. As I recall, he let them work through, rallied suport for "cleaning up" the record, and left things acceptable.

With my user hat on - awww! I was enjoying the bun fight! Although Im really not sure that giving Rand a shovel is particularly fair on him. :(<div></div><div></div><div>With my mod-of-other-forums hat on - yeah, the conversation wasnt going anywhere and nothing was going to be gained by the continuing discussion.</div><div></div><div></div><div>Yes, closing threads is something that mods sometimes have to do. It protects the forum and the community.</div><div></div><div>Its important to remember that if you dont like the way a given forum is modded, you can always move on to another one, or even start your own :)</div>

Just wanted to say that Im fine with the thread being re-opened. I said that Id answer any and all questions or concerns about the issue and was continuing to do so. I certainly did not request the thread being closed, but it was nice to spend a little time on a Sunday with Mystery Guest instead of nervously waiting for the next response by the computer.

I hope you had fun with Mystery Guest Rand. In any discussion forum, Censorship is wrong. Moderators threatening people who have done clear logical arguments with accounts being disabled after the fact is also wrong. Either let people comment on other peoples blogs by blocking comments completely or let SEOs have a free forum to debate. Was not the point behind sphinn that we ran away from other social bookmarking sites that hated seos? Sean, I congratulate you for your courage to be the first to comment on that sphinn discussion. As a long time SEOMoz commentor I agree with all your points.

Personally, I think any reasonable debate should be allowed to run its course. If any individual steps over the line (whatever or wherever that is) or is close to having their account disabled, warn them rather than censoring the whole conversation.Yes, the Linkscapegate comment thread got a little tiresome, but I think the continued probing meant we were (very) gradually cutting through the bullshit and ambiguity. I would certainly like further clarification on the semantic differences raised.I dont think there was any need to protect poor tired Rand - if he wanted to get some rest, meet with his people etc then all he need do is say so himself. If the comments were closed to protect Rand from interrogation I think it sets an unhealthy precedent for a discussion forum - though there doesnt seem to be any evidence to suggest this was the Sphinn mods motivation.Incidentally, if the mods had given it just a little more time then Sphinns in-built comment closure mechanism, otherwise known as Pligg, would have kicked in. A few more comments and the whole page would have been rendered practically unloadable. No wonder Rand is ok with it being re-opened ;)

Closing comments didnt do Rand any favors because it eliminated a channel where he can clear his name. As things stand, he still looks guilty of grossly misrepresenting facts. Claiming linkscapes data is unique doesnt prove SEOMoz scrapes billions of web pages instead of scraping thousands of pages of API data. Inability to be honest/transparent doesnt mean you can claim anything and say "sorry, you just have to trust me, I cant show you proof" - especially when your credibility is in question. Bottom line is we all know Googles UA and list of spider IPs. We all know Google doesnt charge us $1,200/year to run searches. And we all know Google doesnt scrape Site Explorer, Gigablast, or page-store.com results to construct its link graph. So obviously people have questions. Shutting down comments means those questions will be left unanswered. In the short term you may succeed in defusing a ticking time bomb but silencing legit concerns about SEOMoz honesty and integrity will in the long term just build up more animosity and suspicion toward Rand.<div></div><div></div><div>Sphinn has a history of deleting posts that damage someones rep (e.g. why Kims posts constantly get deleted on Sphinn) instead of letting sphinn/desphinn do its magic. I suppose Rob shut comments down because he felt not closing comments may have further damaged SEOMoz brand. The business ties between SEOMoz and Sphinn makes the move appear biased.</div><div></div><div></div><div>I also dont see why youd shut down a discussion that was civilized and flame free. Sure, both MV and John Andrews have history with Rand, but all issues raised were legit.</div><div></div><div></div><div>If talking in circles is a valid reason for shutting down comments, why havent we seen hundreds of posts and comments about Google being evil and controlling the universe deleted or shut down? When it comes to nofollow we hear the same argument over and over again but theyre not censored on Sphinn. So why is a legit discussion on a topic that was only discussed once this year censored?</div><div></div><div></div><div>And whatever happened to "let the community decide"? That I thought was what we decided on after Rob deleted one of Andy Beards posts that Rob felt was too self-promotional. And whatever happened to Desphinn? Wasnt that functionality created partly to prevent heavy handed moderation?</div><div></div><div></div><div>Do we really need a baby sitter to keep us in line? Does Rand really need one?</div><div></div><div></div><div><div>Sure, Sphinn isnt a democracy and mods can do whatever they want. On the other hand, Im not sure consistently pissing off users is wise.</div></div>

All this hot air represents only a tiny minority of sphinners.A couple of my sphinns have been deleted. And once a sphinn that I was commenting on was closed. You didnt see me whining about it.Time to get over it people.

@halfdeck "I suppose Rob shut comments down because he felt not closing comments may have further damaged SEOMoz brand. The business ties between SEOMoz and Sphinn makes the move appear biased."I just said that I didnt see how people had the time for this, but where on earth is your evidence for this? Do you know Rob? Have you ever met him? Im guessing not or youd know that something like that simply wouldnt occur to him. Its this sort of sub X-Files conspiracy theory type comment which brings these sort of discussions down from where they start - with a vaguely valid point.Right, life is occurring somewhere away from my desk - Im off to find it.

"but where on earth is your evidence for this?"<div></div><div></div><div>Ciaran, in your quote notice the words "I suppose" and "appear biased." I didnt claim the idea that personal bias or business ties motivated Robs decision as fact. Closing comments creates the perception of bias. If you want to argue against that, go ahead. </div><div></div><div></div><div>BTW, your jab at my comment bringing the conversation down to a lower level tells me you may want to look at your own eyeballs in the mirror.</div>

A couple of my sphinns have been deleted. And once a sphinn that I was commenting on was closed. You didnt see me whining about it.Not until now I didnt.Any discussion you could ever find on here only represents a tiny minority of sphinners. Call me pedantic, but it looks like this one was popular enough to reach the front page.Thats the social model in action; people will discuss what they want, not what JohnHGohde deems noteworthy. Time to get over it, John.

Personally, Im dying to know who it was that was close to getting banned... and why. I just re-skimmed the comments again, and for the life of me I have no clue wth Rob is talking about. Seriously.For those who care, btw, Rand is commenting in the post itself, although its still not clear what he is saying. Doug Heil said that maybe the reason no one else was commenting was because my CAPTCHA is just too damn hard to figure out. Its a puzzle, you have to slide the pieces to make a word, is anyone else having problems using it by any chance? I think its easier than many of the CAPTCHAs out there myself, but thats just me.

I think the best suggestion in this entire thread has for the most part gone unnoticed.What would we have to do to get Sugarraes suggestion implemented?Id prefer Sphinn close all comments so the discussion would stay on my blog where everyone, including non Sphinners, could be involved. ;-) But thats me :)Is that even a possibility or does Sphinn want to keep the discussion here?

So Ive been off since Friday, just came into Sphinn and thought wow, when I saw the SEOmoz/Linkscape thread. Thats a lot of Sphinns and a lot of comments, especially for a weekend. Im with Rob, and I think he answered things well. But Ill add a bit more myself.@robwatts: "Whilst its always a mods call, it looked like there was still a degree of milege in that thread, but thats just my personal opinion."It did. In fact, I got to the end and had a question I wanted to ask and was disappointed that I couldnt, since it was closed. I found it closed the same way any other member might, just by getting to the end. But I was also relieved because I felt the discussion was going around and around on things that were aside from the point -- how to stay out of the index. Yeah, we got plenty on whether there is a crawler or not -- did Rand lie about having a crawler or not -- and related issues. And that got pounded and pounded to death, without advancing.@webmasterT "Hmmm... the fact SeoMoz spends a lot of money here makes me very skeptical about who is saving who from what!"If you accept ads from anyone, youll be open to such accusations. All I can say is that it doesnt make a difference to us. Theres plenty of negative stuff about Google here that doesnt get closed. If we were going to sell out, I think wed go for the deeper pockets of Google.@ANOnym "I think close relationships of SEOmoz and Danny indirectly influenced this. I am totally sure, they didnt think "Oh, we know Rand and Rebecca will grill us to death, if we dont shut the thread", but the mods certainly have felt it."The mods felt nothing. In fact, looking through my email, I dont recall there even being a message sent out to the various mods about this. It looks like Rob came in, saw a lot of heat there and single-handedly decided it was time to shut things down based solely on what he was seeing there. Ive done the same in other threads. Hes the editor of the site, and I think that was a good decision.@johnandrews "As long as an individual chooses to play the impression/misdirection game, he deserves to be held accountable. When Sphinn chooses to protect him (by closing comments like this), Sphinn shows its true colors (which appear to be evil green once again)."John, we had a dispute earlier this year. We not only closed the thread in the end but I also deleted comments that you and I had going back and forth, where I think we both regretted how things heated up. I think the only "true colors" we showed there was trying to maintain a place where people can discuss stuff like adults, not get lost in personal issues.In terms of protecting misdirection, youre talking about Rand naming me in one of his comments. You called him out about that. Both what he wrote and your interpretation of it are still in the thread. I dont see anything being protected there.@halfdeck "Sphinn has a history of deleting posts that damage someones rep (e.g. why Kims posts constantly get deleted on Sphinn) instead of letting sphinn/desphinn do its magic. I suppose Rob shut comments down because he felt not closing comments may have further damaged SEOMoz brand. The business ties between SEOMoz and Sphinn makes the move appear biased."We dont have a history of deleting posts, other than spam posts. If you or someone would like to guest mod for a week, we can arrange that. Youll discover in short order most of the time is spent killing spam. It would be useful for anyone to also see a post that comes in about someones personal life, nothing to do with search marketing, and ponder if thats appropriate for the site. In some of those infrequent cases, Im pretty sure youd go with the decision to remove. And its another thing entirely to watch people ripping into each other, wondering when the next comment will go fully personal and wonder if you should step in or not. After sitting in that seat, I think youd understand more. But not having that perspective, I certainly can understand that you can question motives, too. I can only tell you what Ive said already."And whatever happened to "let the community decide"? That I thought was what we decided on after Rob deleted one of Andy Beards posts that Rob felt was too self-promotional. And whatever happened to Desphinn? Wasnt that functionality created partly to prevent heavy handed moderation?"Do we really need a baby sitter to keep us in line?"That wasnt the decision. We have moderators. Moderators make decisions about what to keep, comments to edit and so on. This is done very, very rarely. But they will step in and yes, because at times moderation is needed."Now, having said this, I do have some questions on Linkscape and the crawler, so Im going to start a fresh thread to see if we can get some answers. More in a moment.

OK, added the new thread:Can I Get Out Of SEOmozs Linkscape Or Not?http://sphinn.com/story/80142I dont want it personal, and I dont think we need to go back down much of whats already been argued. Instead, Id like to see it just stick to the main point that no one honestly seemed to answer in all that discussion. Can you get out or not? And thats not so easy to answer when you think about tapping into third party data.

Yeah, we got plenty on whether there is a crawler or not -- did Rand lie about having a crawler or not -- and related issues. And that got pounded and pounded to death, without advancing.As near as I can tell from his comments in the actual blog post, at this time it looks like he might be claiming that his team went so far as to have actually built Google and Yahoos bots (as well as all of the others listed). And as silly as it sounds, that is what he really seems to be saying at the moment.

I didnt say it was off-topic. A lot of that stuff was relevant to raise, espeically when you have statements saying there was a crawler then statements that there wasnt one.I just want to know if you can get out of it or not, right? Thats what inspired all of this. The tool came out, some people said this will be amazing competitive intelligence data, then other people said if its based on crawling me, then I want to opt out and not help my competitors. So can you or not?The way Ive read things, hes saying they do spider in addition to using public sources. But thats all probably best left for the other thread.

<div>Last comment (and Danny thanks for taking the time to chime in):</div><div></div><div></div><div>@Danny If I was a mod, sure, Id probably emphasize more with Rob. But as a user, I feel moderation on Sphinn is sometimes heavy-handed.</div><div></div><div></div><div>In this thread, Rob suggested he may have deleted accounts. For what? Getting involved in a heated discussion? For questioning Rands character (which wouldnt have gone on for long if he clarified why he named Google, Yahoo, etc as Linkscapes user agents and still maintained Linkscape crawls billions of pages)? For repeating the same argument over and over again? For some people insisting that Rand is lying? What exactly in that thread justifies an account ban?</div><div></div><div></div><div>Closing a thread or deleting comments is one thing, but deleting accounts for participating in a debate where everyone stays above bringing up someone elses pregnant teenage daughter is not something I want to see on Sphinn. But Ive seen it happen and I feel its over the top.</div>

Sigh.. so much drama, Danny.I called your "Get Free Links from Wired" article irresponsible, and it resulted in so much drama along the way to eventual reason. Randy makes wild claims about having build a web crawler and gets called out on it... and we get so much drama on the way to reason. In the end, what was the truth in either case? Seems really silly to me that we go though so much drama, and continue (your comments above) to allude to it as having been resolved mutually, there being mutual regrets, things getting personal etc. Maybe when the drama has sucked all the energy out of it, yeah - then there were regrets. But otherwise? Your article was irresponsible and Rand hasnt been truthful. Quite simple, really. Congrats to those who persisted beyond the initial denials and drama.. had they not, we probably wouldnt know more than we were sold.

John, Im saying you implied the comments had been closed as a way to protect Rand because thats our "true colors" here. They werent. They were closed because the arguments were not advancing anywhere other than to likely start developing into personal attacks. Thats my opinion; you can believe or disagree as you see fit.I didnt reference what happened between us and to generate yet more drama. I have nil interest in drama these days. Nil. I referenced it because it was indeed a case where stuff got removed all around and no one went off about us somehow showing our "true colors" to protect anything.Moderators act to protect the site overall and ensure people can talk reasonably between themselves and about topics of interest. Its not easy; motives are open to interpretation. But I repeat -- if you or anyone wants to guest moderate, were more than happy to welcome folks who want to try out the hotseat and see for themselves.

No harm done, Danny, you re-opened comments once you got back to the Sphinn controls, as expected. Also as could be expected, the issues moved forward to more specific threads as soon as the abrasive "shutting down the discussion" thing was eliminated. My comments about protectionism ceased to be relevant once comments were re-opened.